Prosecutor Says Lil' Kim Lied To Protect 2 of Her Associates

By JULIA PRESTON

Published: March 2, 2005

Kimberly Jones, the rap artist known as Lil' Kim, told ''two big lies'' to a grand jury to protect two men in her tightly closed rap coterie who were friends she had grown up with in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a federal prosecutor charged yesterday.

In his opening arguments in the trial of Lil' Kim on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, Daniel M. Gitner, an assistant United States attorney, said she ''flat-out lied'' when she testified before the grand jury that she did not know the man in a photograph she was shown. It was a picture of Suif Jackson, an associate who the prosecutor said was in Junior M.A.F.I.A., Lil' Kim's first rap group.

Lil' Kim lied again, Mr. Gitner said, when she testified that Damion Butler, her manager at the time, was not at the Hot 97 radio station in the West Village on Feb. 25, 2001, when a shootout started on the street outside. Mr. Gitner said the government would present two security-camera tapes that would show Mr. Butler joined the shooting.

The prosecutor said that Lil' Kim and her codefendant, Monique Dopwell, a friend who accompanied her on tours, had given ''the exact same'' false testimony in separate appearances before the grand jury, proof, he said, that they had conspired to mislead investigators.

One man was injured in the shootout, which involved people close to Lil' Kim and a rival rap duo, Capone-N-Noreaga. Outside the same building Monday night, one man was injured in a shooting involving associates of the rappers 50 Cent and Game.

Lil' Kim's lawyer, Mel A. Sachs, said her recollection of the 2001 shooting was blurred when she was questioned about it for the first time under oath more than two years later, in summer 2003. He said she had been wearing ''goggle sunglasses'' and a hat pulled down around her face on the day of the shootout and had not seen much of the firing.

Mr. Sachs also contended that she had testified only that she did not recognize the picture of Mr. Jackson, but that she had never said she did not know Mr. Jackson because prosecutors never asked her the question directly.

Mr. Gitner said that Lil' Kim was standing on the street outside Hot 97 after she had been a guest on the radio. She was accompanied by her entourage and some fans when a rival rapper, Kiam Holley, known as Capone, arrived with his own followers.

''He was confronted right in front of the defendants,'' Mr. Gitner said. Gunfire erupted from both sides, with Mr. Butler firing a machine gun and Mr. Jackson drawing a handgun, the prosecutor said. Nearly 30 bullets were fired from at least six guns, government weapons experts said on the stand. One bullet penetrated two walls of a nearby apartment and lodged in a third wall. Efrain Ocasio, a member of Mr. Holley's contingent, was shot in the back.

Mr. Gitner said videotapes and witnesses would show that Mr. Butler accompanied Lil' Kim into the station and stood next to her on the street afterward. Both Mr. Butler and Mr. Jackson have pleaded guilty to weapons charges.

Prosecutors in the trial, in Federal District Court in Manhattan, said they would show that Lil' Kim made videos with Mr. Jackson and that he was a guest at a retreat she held for close friends in Florida a few months after the shooting.

Brian Kaplan, a lawyer for Ms. Dopwell, said she had no motive to lie to help Mr. Butler or Mr. Jackson.

A blow to Lil' Kim's defense came when Jamel Jackson, a former assistant to Mr. Butler who testified reluctantly, said that he, Lil' Kim, Mr. Butler and Suif Jackson had been friends growing up in Bedford-Stuyvesant. When shown the photograph of Suif Jackson that Lil' Kim had told the grand jury she did not recognize, Jamel Jackson identified him immediately. (The Jacksons are not related.)

Judge Gerard E. Lynch berated Mr. Sachs and Lil' Kim for arriving 15 minutes late to court. At one point, with the jury present, Judge Lynch found one of Mr. Sachs's arguments -- that Lil' Kim's testimony was not important to the grand jury -- so legally improper that he told Mr. Sachs if he tried to pursue it, ''you're finished.''